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“I ‘spose if anyone was to get handsy she could whack ‘em on the wrists wiv it,” Niamh said doubtfully.

One of the twins shook her head so her glossy black braids flew. “Ankles,” she corrected the redhead. “If she struck their hand, she would surely break their wrist!”

Connie snapped her fingers. “Agatha’s bonnet!” she said. “Would be the very thing to complete the look!”

“What? That ugly old poke bonnet?” Niamh gasped. “Why, she’d look a fright in it!”

Lizzie stirred uneasily as the other twin flew to the trunk and drew out a misshapen black bonnet, trimmed fussily with velvet and tulle.

“It is very ugly, is it not?” the girl said as she turned it over in her hands and cast a sympathetic look at Lizzie.

Indeed, Lizzie thought taking it from her hands, it must have been exceedingly ugly even when it was new, let alone now it was past its prime. She was used to plain things, but she hoped she’d never had such lamentable taste as to choose a hat such as this one.

“Just the thing,” Connie pronounced with satisfaction. “Here, let me take yours, and you can wear this one. I’ll put yours safely in the trunk.”

Lizzie watched her own bonnet, sensibly trimmed with a navy ribbon, disappear into the box of junk. Suppressing a shudder of distaste, she drew the bonnet over her head.

“I dunno,” said Niamh. “You can hardly see her face in that dark cave!”

“Gives her a slightly sinister air,” Connie said approvingly. “Which will stand her in good stead when dealing with the cheeky blighters we get in here.”

“You look much better than Agatha did in it, though,” one of the twins said, giving Lizzie’s hand a consoling pat.

Niamh went off into choking laughter. At Lizzie’s quizzical look, she pointed wordlessly to a nearby poster which boasted “The Living Skeleton. She has a skull for a head”.

Lizzie’s eyes widened, and she wrenched the bonnet off her head. “You mean this bonnet belonged – ”

“She wasn’t really a skeleton!” the other twin assured her hastily.

“Course she wasn’t!” Connie burst in, sending Niamh an irritated look. “Just a little gaunt was Agatha, with hollowed cheeks and sunken eyes. We played it up with a bit of greasepaint, that’s all.”

“What happened to her?” Lizzie demanded.

“Her sister opened a boarding house,” Niamh said with a shrug. “Aggie went to live with her there and help her run the place.”

Assured that the bonnet’s previous owner did not have some fatal wasting disease, Lizzie set the hat back on her head.

“Shame we ain’t got a fancy black cloak for you,” Connie lamented. “That navy one of yours doesn’t match.”

“Ma Toomes has a black cloak she lent me,” Lizzie volunteered, thinking of the cloak she had not yet returned to Benedict’s grandmother.

Connie brightened. “Maybe you could bring that one with you tomorrow,” she said optimistically. “If you work out, that is,” she added with a frown as though annoyed she had been swept away with the tide of enthusiasm the twins had bought with them. Connie clapped her hands. “Alright now, girls. Let’s get this place set to rights.”

Lizzie fell back as the twins and Niamh busied themselves drawing out screens and diving behind them to disrobe and don their costumes.

“Lizzie, you can help me ready Salome’s grotto,” Connie said gesturing to a basket full of rolled up canvases and artificial roses pinned to streamers. She led the way to the raised platform with the pink velvet fainting couch.

They spent the next five minutes pinning the streamers to the gauzy curtains and unfurling reproductions on canvas of fleshy Venuses surrounded by clouds and cupids and not wearing much by way of clothing.

Lizzie bit her lip. “Whose couch is this?” she asked. The twins had reappeared from behind their screen, their skin painted gold and wearing the most extraordinary garments of voluminous red which contrived to both expose and cover them at the same time. They wore rubies in their exposed bellybuttons, beaded slippers with turned up toes, and pointed headdresses which looked like exotic tiaras about which their braids were woven.

“It’s Salome’s, didn’t I say so?” Connie responded briskly.

“And who, pray, is Salome?”

Connie pursed her lips. “She’s our regular star turn this season, that’s who,” she said standing back and setting her hands on her hips as she surveyed the effect they had achieved. “Good enough, though I declare a pair of plaster of paris cherubs would set it right off.” She clicked her tongue and sighed. “Lizzie, drape that bit of curtain over the back of the couch. That’ll do,” she said with a quick nod.

Niamh emerged from behind her screen, and Lizzie was astonished to see she now wore only her chemise and stays and a pair of lace trimmed bloomers which extended down no further than her knees. More astonishing than this was the fact that the skin of her exposed arms, décolletage, and legs were heavily decorated with intricate designs that looked at first to be black lace, but on closer inspection appeared to be ink drawings of butterflies and birds and flowers.